Tips for Dealing With Overseas Clients

When you run your own company, you might find that you are going to encounter many times when you have to interact with clients or customers from other countries. While this might be somewhat of a learning curve for many people, it is a sign of success. After all, there are a lot of companies out there that strive to be known globally, instead of just locally. Preparing for some of the struggles you might naturally face with international clients will help ensure that you are going to be able to make the best of anything that is thrown your way. The last thing you will want to do is to find that you are losing out on international clients because you were not properly prepared.

Figure Out the Exchange Rate

It is vital that you are figuring out the exchange rate and how to send money overseas. What may work for one company may not work for another and this is something that you have to be aware of at all times. If you are having trouble figuring out the exchange rate, you might be able to hire someone that can help you with that part of the process of doing business with individuals in other countries.

You Might Have to Extend Your Work Hours

Being prepared to extend your work hours can mean a few different things, depending on the type of work that you do. If you are running a company that needs to provide customers with access to live agents for customer service, you are going to need to think about those who are overseas and who are therefore awake during a different time frame than you because of their time zone. In those cases, you might have to set up regular extended hours of operation. However, if you are a freelance website designer, for example, you can work your normal hours as you see fit, as long as you take into account that there might be those few occasions where you need to respond to an email or make a phone call outside of your normal working hours.

Learn the Rules of Customs

If you have to ship items overseas, you need to become extremely familiar with the custom laws. Remember, the laws for one country may be extremely different for the custom laws of another country. Therefore, you will either need to study hard to remember all of the various rules and regulations, or print yourself off a cheat sheet that contains the custom laws that specifically pertain to your business with the countries that you are in business with. If you do not do this and you break some custom laws, you may find that you will have some very unhappy clients. You might also end up with a fine, depending on the law that you broke.

Don’t Take Everything Personal

You will want to remember that how people in other cultures talk and reference things might be a little different than you are used to. Therefore, you want to make sure that you are taking this into account when speaking with clients and customers from other countries. This will help you to make sure that you are not taking an innocent comment the wrong way and then ruining what could have been a very profitable business relationship.

The more you take these things into consideration, the easier it will be for you to grow your business in all parts of the world.

PROJECT EVE MEDIA

Project Eve Media is social media management company with a concentration on lead generation and sales. We position our clients for success through social media management services, social media advertising services, website design, and content marketing.